


Engage

by the_fox333



Category: Original Work
Genre: Original Fiction, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 13:57:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8404291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_fox333/pseuds/the_fox333
Summary: They say war never changes, but that doesn't mean the methods don't.Rated G for bloodless space combat. Contains moderate language.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Quick guide to directions in space:  
> Forward = prograde  
> Backward = retrograde  
> Left = radial in  
> Right = radial out  
> Up = normal  
> Down = anti-normal
> 
> Note: That guide is actually a lie. Those directions only apply when in orbit, and even then have different definitions, but it's hard to describe combat without directions and flanks.

"You're a bastard, you know that, King?"

Supercommander Ella West's voice boomed out across the void, radio waves pinging through the emptiness until they reached the fleet of Supercommander Na'Driz King. The antennas of the foreships identified the frequency, scrubbed any interference from nearby pulsars, and delivered the message to Central Command, conveniently located in every support and carrier vessel in the fleet. King smiled- as much as a computer could be said to smile- and shot his own reply back across the gap, the foreships of West's own fleet relaying it back.

"I won't deny that," he acknowledged. "But just because I'm a bastard doesn't mean I don't know how to fight." West's point-defense lasers easily caught the volley of pulsar bombs, the EMP transmitters fried before they could do any damage to the communications systems. With the flip of a few computer banks, West idly engaged the fission missiles aboard the foreships, sending off a volley of her own which met the same fate as King's. It was customary to begin a battle with impossible-to-miss shots; a sort of nonverbal "good luck" between technological behemoths.

"Well, it's probably about time to cut the chatter and get to the shatter," West quipped. A well-timed laser pulse on the last word picked off a few foreships, the rest pulling back into the body of the fleet. King returned the favor with a line of Tesla torpedoes, knocking out about half her foreships before they could get the rest of their missiles off. West winced as the blast knocked one of her Gatestormers for a loop, its first artillery shot going wide. Luckily, one wide shot was made up for by a hundred on-target ones, and even the photon shields of King's Cleavers couldn't stop the sheer force of a hundred well-placed KCK-1200's. The stout missiles took out a large chunk of King's heavy assault force. West smiled as the scanners picked up the wreckage of a repair hub; that was one less computer bank King had to function.

The miniature victory was just that, however. The surviving Cleavers began their signature fire pattern: an asynchronous, chaotically targeted wall of heavy plasma fire. The front row of Gatestormers was torn through by the relentless pounding, and West cursed when the bolts cut into another. The Bastions just behind countered the plasma with their energy neutralization fields, but the damage was done. West had been foolish to forget King's signature opener. She had spent a full three hours docked at Jove XVII planning for this engagement, studying every recorded encounter in which King took part. His trademark opener was a move Terran generals had dubbed the "King's Cleaver" in his name, and West should have known better than to place two rows of Gatestormers in front of the Bastions. One was all she needed for her opening shot, and the second was bound to be neutralized before they could do anything. It was a tactical blunder worthy of a rookie.

But Ella West was no rookie. Two Bolt squadrons detached from the main body of the fleet, veering around to the radials and rocketing into flanking positions before King could dispatch trackers to take care of them. The fighters careened through the formation's center like a harvester through an asteroid field, well-placed shots downing several command hubs and a drone carrier. The squadrons were quickly picked off by King's own, but combat on this scale had never been anything but a war of attrition.

"Do you like this, Ella?" King's voice rang out across the turmoil, pinging its was across contested space. Ella frowned, carefully spreading her carriers into a crescent. "Is this what you wanted in life?" King repeated, the last of the Cleavers skewered by his own lasers. King always was one to make sacrifices for the 'greater good'. "Did you go through military school thinking, 'My greatest ambition is to have my consciousness transferred to a supercomputer scattered amongst a collection of weapons as big as Earth's moon'? Why did you choose this path, West?"

West grimaced and scattered the front lines, the carriers rapid-firing their payloads directly towards the hole in King's formation. "I don't like to wax philosophical with people I'm about to kill," she answered curtly. The strike produced mixed results, some of the point-defense lasers on the downed Cleavers still active.

"I do," King responded. "I've often wondered: who had the idea to load entire people into computer banks of unimaginable value and say, 'Here you go, win the war'? What kind of person even agrees to abandon their life as a living, breathing construct of carbon to become a cold, calculating weapon of war?"

"You should ask yourself that," West snapped. She wished King would cut the chit-chat so she could focus all her processing power on victory. The battle had progressed into the midgame, squadrons of fighters and drones clashing, neither side's long-range weapons able to target effectively through the chaos. A split-second area scan showed King had a slight advantage in numbers, but if she played her cards right-

"For me, it was simple," King answered. "I was 127. My wife had died decades ago, my child killed in a troop carrier explosion. Not to mention the terminal infection in my left lung. I had no money, nothing to live for, and not long to do it. So I did the only thing I could: became the best goddamned commander this side of Eriti." An EMP charge disrupted a chunk of West's fighters, and King took the opportunity to push her back.

"For the Coalition."

"Well, I did live in Coalition territory, so that was only natural. Their supercommander program needed some help getting on its feet, and I like to think I aided that. And just look at what we've accomplished! Not even 350 cycles, and we've pushed the mighty Terran Federation back to the interior of their own Oort cloud!" West's Hawkhunter squeezed off a shot before slipping back behind cover, destroying a carrier in a perfectly executed Middle Finger maneuver, copyright Ella Jone West XX3AV-1282. All rights reserved.

"But you. You were only 25. Fresh out of the Academy, and you signed up for the Supercommander Training Initiative. Why? You had a family, you had friends, you even had your virginity." Ella scowled, unable to make any decisive moves. Just keep shooting. "And you decided to leave it all behind for what? Honor? Justice? The Good Of Mankind?" The smug son-of-a-bitch wasn't relenting. Was this just his insert-details-here template speech for all his opponents? That had to be why he was able to talk and fight so well simultaneously.

"You know, Ella, I learned a lot from the footage of your battles," King said conversationally, changing topics abruptly. Ella grimaced as the scan revealed King's significant advantage. Time for Plan A-2.

"First, I learned of your resilience." Graviton missiles priming. "You never back down, no matter what the odds." 37%. "What's your motto? 'Never give up, never surrender'?" 82%. "Seeing as you're still alive, it's served you well so far." Primed. Initiate security checks.

"I learned that you often sustain major casualties during combat." Fuck him. Primary check: positive. "Nothing dishonorable; I know plenty of fine commanders like that." Secondary check: negative. Shit. Correcting anomaly. "But really, it wouldn't hurt to be a bit more conservative." Secondary check: positive. "Attrition may be easy, but it's also easy to lose." Tertiary check: positive. All systems online.

"And finally, I learned the most important thing of all." A lucky shot slipped through the frenzy, zapping an Avenger and setting off its cargo, taking most of the radial out flank with it. Damn graviton missiles. "Like many generals raised planetside-" Well, there were still two. One right into the middle should do it. "You often have trouble thinking three-dimensionally." Wait, what?

Too late, West realized the implications of King's words. The fighters screamed down towards her mostly unprotected normal and anti-normal flanks like a swarm of avenging angels, devastating what remained of the drone command ships. The front lines jumped towards her, West's halved forces no match for the automated onslaught. Grasping at straws, West loaded every weapon she had and fired at the advancing masses. But even her largest burst wasn't enough to so much as dent the horde. Tactical Rule 17: He who makes it to the endgame with drones to spare wins, and King practically had them coming out of his ears.

A bank of computers on a single ship could comfortably hold a human mind, but that didn't mean West wasn't feeling the loss of processing power. King's forces had her remaining ships surrounded, pushing in slowly, teasing her with the possibility of destruction. "Do you fear death, Ms. West?" King asked softly. "The great unknown? Are you repelled? Fixiated? Indifferent?"

"D-damn you," West gasped, subroutines and memory banks falling offline every second.

"Well, luckily for you, I won't make you worry about it today." Waves of drones crashed against the ships, cracking and smashing the hulls until only one remained. "For today only, I'm offering you the deal of a lifetime: I spare you, you work for the Coalition. Helping to crush the empire whose foolish ideals you fought so hard to defend is an added bonus." The motherfucker. Well, at least that line rid West of any guilt she may have had about this. Down shielding on all reactors. "I've taken the liberty of taking that graviton missile you have on board there offline, and we both know a reactor meltdown would barely even scratch me. So what'll it be?"

"Yes," West responded, her voice shaky but triumphant. Even masters made mistakes, and West had just found one. "But electronic charges aren't the only way to set off an explosion." King's swarm slowed momentarily, high-speed collision avoidance less important than processing her words. "Other explosions are also very good at that." Fuel dump successful. Reactor overload detected. Critical meltdown predicted in 6- 5- 4- 3-

If sound existed in a vacuum, the sound of King's tortured scream as his entire fleet was torn apart by the unrelenting forces of gravity would have been one to hear. As it was, though, an outside observer might have been so distracted by the annihilation that they would fail to notice the two flashes that narrowly escaped the carnage. The two spheres were about the size of elephants, coated in military-grade blast-proof plating and painted one with a blue circle circumscribed around a cross and the other with a red hammer. By no means would Ella West be defeated that easily, and by no means would Na'Driz King lose to such a cheap tactic. The battle may have been resolved for now, but the war was far from over.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm considering expanding upon this, but I don't really have any ideas. I am, however, open to suggestions.


End file.
